For Now
by Eridanus1123
Summary: It seems that there are some acts that even Hermione Granger is determined not to forgive. Draco Malfoy plans on changing that. Oneshot.


He thought he saw a hint of discerning wisdom in her eyes when she opened the door to her apartment.

It was probably just a trick of the flickering hall light.

"Look." Knuckles still rested on the wood of her front door; it felt as though he couldn't do without the support. Hers were wrapped around the door jamb, whitened a few shades past their usual.

(It scared him, a little, that he knew what colour her knuckles usually were, when in their school days he would have been hard pressed to tell you the colour of her eyes.)

It had taken longer to reconcile with her than it had with the others. He uses the word 'reconcile' loosely, echoing once or twice in his head, even though he knows that it was much harder than that, without a foundation of previous friendship. He had had to earn her trust, all of their trust. For Christ's sake - even Ron had forgiven him before she had, over a drunken, forced game of poker.

Hermione had been harder. She had always been harder - harder to please, harder to talk to, harder to screw around with, bottle in hand. He would go out for dinner with Harry and Ginny, sometimes Ron as well, and her voice would be perfectly audible, screeching on the other end of a telephone connection to Harry. He would enter a room - hovering around the edges as though he could press himself into the wall, for the first few months - and she would leave it, throwing down book or plate or toddler as she went.

It was at a first birthday party for Harry and Ginny's eldest that she spoke to him without sarcasm or mild profanity, with a sombrero perched on her head and shading her eyes from the sunlight that bore through the unblemished sky. It had been a lovely day - all blue skies and dewed grass and the laughter of children while their parents drank Ron's special punch - and she had been curled in a deck chair by the pool, standing guard in case anybody needed saving.

She had volunteered for the job, he remembered, so Harry could tend to the barbeque and Ginny could show off her engorged stomach. "Baywatch?" he had asked weakly, gesturing to the red swimsuit beneath her white shirt. She didn't ask how he had come across the reference, and she didn't slap him for more or less gesturing at her breasts.

"Auntie Hermione! Why don't you like Uncle Draco?"

By that point, the name had stuck to him like chewing gum - he had become part of the family, whether Hermione liked it or not. He had smirked lightly at the child, who, party hat centred and pointed like a unicorn horn, had stridden out with hands on hips to demand an explanation from them. It might have been Victoire, judging by the faint hint of accent, but there had been relatives of all shapes and sizes around that day.

"I don't dislike him, Victoire."

"Then why won't you talk to him?" The little girl was persistent, chubby fingers clutching at Hermione's thin wrist.

"I will talk to him, sweetheart, if you go back and play with Teddy. He'll change his nose for you if you ask your very sweetest, I promise."

She had scampered away, laughter flying back at them, but turned a suspicious head as though to ensure that Hermione was fulfilling her end of the deal.

"My donning of this swimsuit is in no way an attempt to emulate the women from that programme."

"Pardon?" His eyes had widened, fingers had loosened around the glass he held. He had almost given her up as a lost cause, as one jagged shard that didn't want to be glued back together.

(Nobody could ever really give her up for good, though, least of all someone as weak-willed as him.)

"I was... running late. It was all I could find."

It had slid into place in his mind, like the final piece of a puzzle he hadn't thought of as incomplete.

(Except in the middle of the night - fists thrashing in the hold of another nightmare - and every now and again when he awoke in the morning, and occasionally every third breath or so.)

"Okay." She had slipped the bottle from between his limp fingers and taken a sip, without so much as wiping the top where his lips had rested. He had waved at Victoire - triumphant, and vowing to buy her a pony for her next birthday - and Hermione had commented on the beret atop his hair, and it had... begun.

Now, he stood in front of her apartment, a letter crumpled beyond recognition in his pocket, and half-formed phrase swirling around in his mind, frantically trying to form a cohesive statement.

(All he needed were three select words, but they chose to stray away from the tip of his tongue and take refuge in the back of his mind.)

"I'm truly sorry," was the meagre substitute his brain formed.

(They weren't enough - nothing he could give her would ever be quite enough, in his mind.)

Her eyes whip over him, brooding and a little tearstained. It makes his voice crack a little - dinosaurs running rampant over pavement, crack - when he tries again. "I didn't mean-"

This time, it's her front door closing gently that cuts him off, rather than his mind's fixation with associating his speech with her favourite number.

He could call Ron over, perhaps, now that he'd mastered the functions of the cell phone he had been bought for Christmas - Harry would be with Ginny and Ron could always convince Hermione to open her door to him. Ron, though, would be with Astoria - the society darling he had stumbled across in an adult store and been enamoured with ever since - and had warned him in no uncertain terms that any contact over the next three days would be severely punished.

He tried once more. "I brought ice-cream." He thought he heard a slight sound - body leaning against wooden door, perhaps. "Gin, as well," - even though that had been for him more than anything else, and was already well on its way to a better place.

He could see the shadows of her bare feet, stretched and distorted, peeking under the crack in the door. Knowing she was still standing there, he got on his knees and tried to peer through the gap between the door and the carpet. All he saw were unpainted toenails - and then a voice.

"On all fours? And in your new trousers, to boot."

She could be positively vitriolic, when she wanted.

(He wouldn't have her any other way.)

He didn't want it to matter, when they argued about what sides to order from the Thai takeaway restaurant or which movie to see on their anniversary or whether, in the future, she would take his surname or keep her own. He didn't want to argue about hypothetical children and who got to sign their name first to Harry's kids' birthday cards.

(He would let her sign first, for the rest of her life, if only she would let him be enough.)

A certain three words flew with force to the front of his mind and cracked against it with a resounding thud. He didn't say them aloud.

He didn't have to.

The door opened a little. First just a crack, enough to let the blue-tinted light from her lamp shine through, and then enough that he could slip through with ease. She stood there, in that worn robe, and perhaps he could be enough for her, just for now.


End file.
